A Prison Unsought (69 page)

“I told you at the beginning that I
thought it likely you would be a better ruler than your father.” The Panarch
stood up. “Now I am sure of it.” He waved at the console. “If, of course, you
overcome the Navy, which does not seem as handicapped by your advantage as I
warrant you expected.”

Then his face became pensive. “I regret only one thing—that
this last lesson will make it less likely that you will ever underestimate us
again.”

As the door slid open, Anaris shook his head, meeting the
Panarch’s eyes in the last personal contact they would ever have, away from the
eyes of others.

“No, Gelasaar. Never again.”

o0o

“Anaris does not believe a person’s
destiny can be determined by a knot,” the Panarch said. “And he is right.”

The others drew in around the table at which Gelasaar sat.
So he decided to spare him,
thought
Caleb.
I would like to have heard that
conversation.

The Panarch spread his hands on the table. As he continued
speaking, one finger twitched occasionally. “I think we all agree, as rational
beings must, that one cannot plan one’s destiny, nor escape the consequences of
one’s actions.”

His voice was measured, without any emphasis save the normal
cadence of Douloi speech; the meaning overlaid on his words was carried by the
movement of a finger.
We must plan
escape.

“When I was young,” said Mortan Kree, carrying on the
conversation in the same fashion, “I thought I could best destiny, but then it
seemed I had all the time in the world.”
When
best time?

Their time together on the
Samedi
had made this mode of communication second nature, so much
so that the camouflaging words dropped out of memory almost as soon as uttered.
Caleb suppressed a grin at the irony of the situation. This was one benefit of
political training he’d never expected: that the ability to effortlessly
generate words without meaning would someday be his only means of meaningful
discourse. Then he bent his attention to the conversation.

“(On) (the way) (down) (or) (on the
surface),” said Carr. “(Can’t overcome) (whole) (ship).”

“(I agree). (Short journey);
(mixed) (people),” said Gelasaar. They’d already discussed the mixture of
Dol’jharians and Rifters on the ship, and decided that Anaris’s escort was
designed to protect him and control the Rifters, relying on the destroyer’s
crew for technical know-how in all areas save computing, where the Dol’jharians
could not afford to cede control.

“(They) (will) (keep us) (in)
(lock), (gravity) (standard),” Matilde Ho replied. It was unlikely that the
shuttle had independent gravitors, and the Rifter crew wouldn’t stand for heavy
gee.

“(Heavy) (ones) (aim) (high),” said
Yosefina Paerakles. “(Maybe) (yield) (enough) (time)?” The Dol’jharians, used
to a twenty percent higher acceleration, would tend to shoot high under
standard gee.

Slowly the plan evolved. They had seen in the eyes of their
captors nothing but disdain for their aged prisoners—Gelasaar had told them
that of the Dol’jharians probably only Anaris knew of the power of the Ulanshu
Kinesics. Soon they had all the elements but one.

“(One) (chance) (only),” said Kree.

“(We need) (surprise),” Carr
rumbled, rubbing his chest and wincing. Once again, Caleb wondered what they
had done to him. His every movement seemed weighted by pain. “(Use) (captors’)
(superstition),” he continued, coughing.

The Panarch looked a question at him. Padraic met his gaze
squarely, “(Willing) (death) (and words of) (their) (native tongue).” The
admiral shook his head at the protest in Gelasaar’s face, and looked around at
all of them.

“(Your) (freedom) (is the)
(anodyne) (I seek). (Death) (is a) (longed-for) (friend).” He coughed again, a
painful, tearing sound.        

The Panarch nodded slowly.

There was nothing more to be said.

Emmet Fasthand stomped onto the bridge and glared at his
crew. To his surprise, and grudging satisfaction, no one returned his gaze.
Even Moob looked away, uncharacteristically subdued.

Maybe that Karushna-whatsis wasn’t such a bad thing, after
all. He had made the mistake, long ago, of picking a tough crew, in the hopes
of making the big kill. It had been profitable, but they’d turned out to be so
tough the only way he’d been able to control them—barely—was his rule about
instant trips to vacuum if anyone wore a boswell aboard the ship. And he made
sure they knew he had sensors deployed everywhere.

So he thoroughly reveled in the knowledge that tough as they
were, the Dol’jharians had proved to be tougher.

He laughed, enjoying the startled looks from the scum-sucking
blits, and sat down in the command pod. A costly lesson, perhaps, but now, just
maybe, if they survived this voyage, they’d be manageable enough to get him
somewhere in the evolving Rifter fleet hierarchy. And if not, after this run
he’d be able to afford to hire in a new crew that he could dominate.

Moob drew her breath in audibly, her tattooed skin puffed
with lacerations. She’d win rank points on Rifthaven with her Draco clan for
her battle—the only one, Fasthand figured, to claim anything positive from
their taste of Dol’jharian custom.

He grimaced, remembering Hestik lying with broken neck and
spine in the corridor outside the Dol’jharian territory, and one of the engine
crew stuffed, mangled almost beyond recognition, under a console in the aft rec
room. And Sundiver, lying in her bunk, face to the wall, unwilling, or unable,
to speak.

Fasthand smiled.
Just
wish I’d been able to get imagers in on the fun Anaris had with her.
Then
the countdown on the main screen caught his eyes and his enjoyment abruptly
evaporated: EMERGENCE MINUS 23:08:40.

Gehenna. His tension returned in full measure. At least that
chatzer Anaris and his slimy little Bori hadn’t specified an approach. He’d
play it safe: twenty light-minutes up and over the fourth planet.

Safe.
A bitter
laugh corroded his throat and he suppressed it. The Panarchists had to know by
now, after that hyperwave broadcast—they had spies everywhere. The first thing
they would have done would be to dispatch a battlecruiser—maybe several
cruisers—to the Gehenna system, to lie in wait.

The hatch behind him hissed open, and Morrighon entered.

What is he doing here?
The Bori had always avoided the bridge before. Was this more evidence of the
shift in power the Dol’jharian chatz-war had precipitated? Had
he
participated? Fasthand glanced at Tat.
She didn’t look bruised or battered. Had Morrighon caught one of her cousins?

Fasthand’s speculations died as Anaris’s secretary walked up
to his pod. Despite his twisted frame, Morrighon moved as though he owned the
bridge and everyone on it. “Captain. My lord has instructions for the approach
to Gehenna.”

Instantly enraged, Fasthand started to order him off the
bridge, but his protest stuck in his throat as Morrighon continued. “We have
learned that the Gehennan system is warded by a hyperbolic fivespace distortion
some thirty light-minutes in extent, which infallibly destroys any ship that
approaches, whether in skip or under geeplane. The only safe approach is along
the plane of the ecliptic.”

Disbelief was Fasthand’s first reaction. “What kind of
trickery is this?” he snarled.

Morrighon said, “It appears to be the trickery by which the
Panarchists have protected this planet for centuries.”

The whining voice was in dead earnest. The nausea boiling in
Fasthand’s guts echoed in the greenish cast to Lassa’s face, Hestik’s
replacement at the nav console.
We’re set
to emerge ten light-minutes inside the killing zone.

Morrighon evidently saw his distress, for he smiled thinly.
“You are therefore directed to emerge at plus thirty-five light-minutes, well
outside the Knot, and approach the fourth planet along the plane of the
ecliptic under geeplane, using your fiveskip only in case of dire emergency. Is
that understood?”

Something was familiar, but right now Fasthand had to get
rid of Morrighon. He could sense the fear sweeping through the bridge crew.
The twisted little chatzer is doing this on
purpose.

“Is that all you can tell me?” Fasthand snarled.

“That is all you need to know,” Morrighon replied. “Unless
you wish me to inform my lord of your dissatisfaction with his orders?” He left
the bridge without waiting for Fasthand’s response.

After a brief, shocked silence, the crew erupted in a
barrage of curses and horrified speculation, scrambling Fasthand’s thoughts as
he tried to identify what it was Morrighon had said that seemed so important.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he shrieked finally. “You
stupid, Shiidra-sucking deviants! This is just what that Bori slug wants.”

The uproar subsided.

“Lassa, reprogram for thirty-five out and along,” he
commanded, noting with a fresh surge of anger that she was already doing so,
obeying Morrighon rather than waiting for him to issue the order.
I’d like to tie that little chatzer’s legs
in a knot and finish the job the Dol’jharians started.

“The Knot.” He’d heard the emphasis
on that word. That was what his mind had seized on, but why?

He had spoken aloud, and Lassa looked up from her console.

“You like holo-games, Captain?” Her
voice was conciliatory; she’d apparently realized her error in not waiting for
his order.

“Holo-games?” The sense of
familiarity trembled on the edge of dissolution at the distraction.

“Yeah. There’s a real famous battle-sim
called the Knot, based on a Naval Academy setup—”

“The Knot!” He shouted the word. “Chatz!
It’s real.” Fasthand’s voice trailed off as he realized, first, where he’d
heard the phrase before—not Lassa’s game, but in a data dump from the
MinervaNet he’d picked up long ago—and second, the chilling, damnable
cleverness of the Panarchist government in leaving the secret of Gehenna in
plain sight like that, thus ensuring that it would be overlooked for eight
hundred years.

“Gehenna is the Knot,” he said, his
tone resonant with wonder. “It must be.” He tapped with a controlled frenzy at
the console; the main screen flickered with a dizzying riot of images as the
computer searched, then stabilized on an image of a reddish hyperbola with a
blue-white sun at its center.

“That’s it,” said Lassa. “I’ve
played it a lot. Problem is, the Knot’s unstable.” She stopped, her expression
changing. “No way,” she said, her voice shaking. “That’s worse than hitting
radius in skip.”

“Shut up, you piss-faced pult,”
Moob shouted, her temper flaring. “It’s only a chatzing game.” The bravado in
her voice was painfully apparent.

“No,” said Fasthand
wearily, “it’s not just a game. It’s an incredibly detailed simulation from the
Naval Academy that we have to assume is the Gehenna system.” He glanced at
Lassa. At least one thing was going right—against all odds he had a navigator
who knew the Gehenna system.

If the damn game is accurate.
It would be just like the
Panarchists to throw some inaccurate—and deadly—details into the game, just in
case. But he had the real simulation in the Samedi’s databanks.

He turned to the navigator. “What do you mean, unstable?”

She returned his gaze, her eyes stricken. “It—the game. I
mean, the Knot—it’s sensitive to gravitational impulses. You can use the
fiveskip, for short hops; you can fire skipmissiles; if you have a
battlecruiser, you can even fire your ruptors.” She swallowed and motioned at
the screen. “But every time you do, the hyperbola flattens out a little and the
transverse axis shortens.” She stopped speaking.

“And?” said Fasthand impatiently,
scanning his data to match it against her recollection of the game. So far, the
game seemed an accurate rendition of the Naval simulation.

“And,” continued Lassa, “eventually,
the two lobes meet, and you don’t come out again.” She emitted a
semi-hysterical snicker. “The Knot’s got some killer animations there—in one of
’em, the Knot pulls your skeleton out through your blungehole.”

With a shriek of rage Moob spun around her pod and leapt
toward Lassa, a knife materializing in her hand. Fasthand’s reaction was
instantaneous. He couldn’t afford to lose this navigator, not now. He jumped up
and palmed his sleeve-jac; only at the last moment did he lower his aim. He couldn’t
afford to lose his best scantech, either, not with the prospect of a
battlecruiser lying in wait.

The pulse of plasma scored the deck at Moob’s feet,
splattering her trousered legs with flecks of white-hot metal. She dropped the
knife with a howl of pain and slapped frantically at the smoldering cloth. Then
her snarl of rage turned sulky when she saw Fasthand’s resolve. Fasthand
steeled himself and did not look away from her mad gaze.

Moob shrugged at last, and turned away, muttering, “Stupid
suck needed some sense scared into her—no good to us if she goes all jelly-bag
on us. I wouldn’t have hurt her bad.”

“No,” said Fasthand, trying very
hard not to let his voice shake. “You wouldn’t have.” He stood unmoving until
Moob returned to her console; she did not attempt to retrieve her knife.

Lassa watched, her back stiff, her eyes dark with hatred.

Slowly the atmosphere
of the bridge returned to something closer to normal. Fasthand sat down and
stared at the Knot, portrayed in chilling clarity on the main screen. What
other secrets might there be, waiting, like this one, to blast the unwary with
sudden agonizing death? Emmet Fasthand felt very old—he’d been on the Riftskip
too long, and he feared his luck was running out.

Not yet, it isn’t. We
found out in time.

This time.

o0o

A short time later, Tat cautiously approached the ready
room, not knowing what to expect. The captain’s summons had been terse.